The buzz surrounding VSPEX and Datalink

There's a tremendous amount of activity at EMC World, and one area to highlight is VSPEX. On April 12, EMC announced VSPEX, a reference architecture integrating strategic partners such as VMware, Microsoft, Cisco, Brocade, Intel, and others. They provided 14 pre-validated solutions that are server-agnostic, and Cisco followed up with Cisco Validated Designs that leverage unified fabric and unified compute. Unlike Vblock, which is engineered and manufactured at VCE, VSPEX is intended to be designed, integrated, and delivered by partners like Datalink. This aligns perfectly with Datalink's V-Scape™ strategy.

EMC and Arrow (our distributer for EMC) immediately recognized our experience and expertise in this area and nominated us to be one of the first VSPEX partners. Now, under the EMC umbrella, customers can choose between Vblock – a structured, engineered, and VCE-supported solution that Datalink can deliver – or VSPEX – a more flexible strategy where Datalink does the final design, integration, implementation, and support of a complete multi-vender solution. VPSEX also provides the customer with the opportunity to migrate the complete solution and/or leverage existing assets.

At EMC World, we had the chance to meet the EMC VSPEX team at the Datalink booth (#923). Needless to say they're impressed with our unique position to be able to design, integrate, implement, AND support the unified VSPEX solution. In fact, Datalink has multiple customers we've recently done this for.

Customer response has also been overwhelming. The team in the Datalink booth estimates that more than 200 customers have signed up for a follow-up detailed demonstration and discussion on how VPSEX can help them transform their IT.